The Prestigious Free Software Award Goes to Karen Sandler (sfconservancy.org) 60
Each year the Free Software award goes to someone making "a great contribution to the progress and development of free software, through activities that accord with the spirit of free software." This year's winner is a former executive of the GNOME Foundation, Karen Sandler. Jeremy Allison - Sam, Slashdot reader #8,157, brought this announcement.
Richard Stallman, President of the FSF, presented Sandler with the award during a ceremony. Stallman highlighted Sandler's dedication to software freedom. Stallman told the crowd that Sandler's "vivid warning about backdoored nonfree software in implanted medical devices has brought the issue home to people who never wrote a line of code. Her efforts, usually not in the public eye, to provide pro bono legal advice to free software organizations and [with Software Freedom Conservancy] to organize infrastructure for free software projects and copyleft defense, have been equally helpful."
In her acceptance speech, Sandler spoke about her dedication to free software as a patient, advocate and professional. "Coming to terms with a dangerous heart condition should never have cost me fundamental control over the technology that my life relies on", said Sandler... "This issue is personal not just for me but for anyone who relies on software, and today that means every single person."
In her acceptance speech, Sandler spoke about her dedication to free software as a patient, advocate and professional. "Coming to terms with a dangerous heart condition should never have cost me fundamental control over the technology that my life relies on", said Sandler... "This issue is personal not just for me but for anyone who relies on software, and today that means every single person."
Which wall??? (Score:1, Insightful)
Since you mentioned Linux and women, I have to ask, do you mean the "wall" that keeps women from rising to near-parity with men in STEM fields?
That wall has been up longer than I've been alive and it's long past time it came down.
Re: Which wall??? (Score:1)
I think he means the wall women put try to put between themselves and him when he's been creeping on them.
Re: Which wall??? (Score:2)
Here's a hint. When one woman puts a wall between you and her, that's her problem. When all women put walls between themselves and you, that's your problem. We have no reason to think that the woman in the article has ever interacted with the poster I responded to, so we must conclude his bitterness was directed at women in general. Thus, he's a creep.
Re: (Score:3)
In code, noone can see your plumbing.
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She's a lawyer, not a coder, who advocates for free software and provides related legal advice, often pro bono.
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You mean the walls made from choices that free women make willingly in order to shape their lives as they choose? Men do this, too, btw. The only thing wrong here is your assumption that the outcomes must be evenly distributed.
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While your point is valid in theory, is does not completely explain the gender disparity in STEM and, for that matter, in other fields.
In a "perfect" world where there was no gender-specific pressure to pursue careers, I would expect most fields (all except those few which depend on gender-specific physical or psychological attributes) to be a lot closer to 50/50 than they are in most STEM fields are today in the United States.
In America, there are still too many teenagers and young adults whose early educa
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Having a womb that employers are afraid of isn't a choice.
Fee software award?? (Score:2)
Each year the Fee Software award goes to someone making "a great contribution to the progress and development of free software, through activities that accord with the spirit of free software." [emphasis added]
Sometimes spell-check just isn't enough.
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I think "EditorDavid" is improperly named.
EditorDavidAgainstSlashdotGoliath?
Fixed at last Re:Fee software award?? (Score:1)
It took more than a few minutes but the typo is fixed.
Prestigious? (Score:4, Insightful)
I've used Linux for 22 years and participated in forums and discussions related to the kernel and to various projects off and on. I've never heard of this award. How is it prestigious?
Re: Prestigious? (Score:1)
If by "accomplishment" you mean nearly bankrupting Gnome, then yes. She is accomplished.
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I've used Linux for 17+ years and participated in forums and discussions, etc., and I first heard of this award more than 15 years ago. Seriously. And I'm just a teacher.
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But, but, but, it's (not knowing how the individual wishes to gender Identify, me I prefer attack helicopter although I am considering wedge tail eagle, bungil for short https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org], so who am I to guess about other people's gender) a lawyer not a coder, what has the FOSS world come to, the horror. Good to see there is much more to FOSS than just cantankerous coders ;D.
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The rule of thumb is, if one has to explicitly call it "prestigious" when describing, there is no prestige gained by getting it...
Re:Prestigious? (Score:4, Insightful)
She is more on the GNU side. She did a lot of work with GNOME and tried for more than a decade to get the source code to her heart implant.
Kinda scary that a person can have to rely on closed source code just to stay alive.
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If Stallman is involved, can it be considered prestigious?
Does he know yet that the GPL is dead?
Who and what? (Score:1)
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Congratulations #8,157 (Score:2)
Whoever the hell you are.
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Karen Sandler is an SJW who almost destroyed GNOME (Score:2, Informative)
https://www.reddit.com/r/TheRe... [reddit.com]
https://pukeko.net.nz/blog/201... [pukeko.net.nz]
https://voxday.blogspot.co.uk/... [blogspot.co.uk]
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
That’s bullshit. That reddit thread takes data on a short period of time and doesn’t take the whole picture into consideration. The GNOME Foundation never diverted money from its budget to spend it on OPW. All expenses had matching income (+ a commission for administrative fees), but they may not show up in the report for the same year. Take the annual reports for 2011—2017 and you’ll be able to see it.
The issue that OPW created for GNOME and that started this rumour was cash flow, b
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you don't understand. it's the latest fashion for the moderators.
just mention SJW and get automatic upvotes.
Re:Karen Sandler is an SJW who almost destroyed GN (Score:4, Informative)
For one month there was an issue where paying interns was scheduled to happen before sponsors paid the foundation, and because the programme was growing quickly there was a temporary shortfall. It was resolved quickly and without drama.
This was at the height of the anti-SJW movement. Vox Day wrote some nonsense about it (your third link), others reposted (your second link is just a Day repost) and the narrative that the Outreachy programme was destroying GNOME became fake news.
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LOL - cue the legions of geldings rushing to say that a) GNOME was never bankrupt b) it wasn't Karen's fault.
Well... a) is actually true. GNOME never actually declared bankruptcy... it just ran out of money as it suddenly and unexpectedly found that it had no cash left, and had to rush to corporate sponsors to beg for more - which it got.
b) Karen Sandler approved and bankrolled massive outreach programs... which consisted of paying women to do minor shit that men do for free. Effectively, bankrolling the fu
they're all going to laugh at you! (Score:1)
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While the award has mostly been given to those who advanced free software by writing code, it was always considered an award for those who advance free software, including those who do so in ways other than coding.
When Lawrence Lessing got the award in 2002 it wasn't for writing code.
Just curious (Score:2)
The award is political (Score:1)
While the award is always given to someone who helped advance free software, there are many such people, and giving the award also sends a political message. The FSF is surely aware of that and gives the award accordingly.
IMO, clearly the main message of this award is that FSF wants to emphasize the importance of software freedom in implanted medical devices.
People always have a choice of refusing to use non-free software, usually at the cost of some convenience. In many areas (e.g. compilers) free sof